The Blog of Harald

Michaéla came up with a way to compromise on the “first model year” issue with the new car. If we lease instead of purchase, then if it the truck is a lemon we can return it and let dealer worry about it. We’ll take a bit of a loss, but theoretically this is smaller loss than if we tried to sell it ourselves; if it’s a lemon, the resale value will suck.

Because auto loan finance rates are disgustingly low (we’re staring at 2.9%), we do fairly well on the lease vs. buy tradeoff. We’ll pay slightly more in total interest if we buy out the lease, but our payments will be 25% smaller. Since we generally struggle with cash flow (damned tuition fees!), this is a good thing.